Traditionally, there are two common internet advertising market segments. One is the text advertisement segment, and the other is the banner segment. Text advertisements are generally segments of text that may be linked to the advertiser's web site via a hypertext link. The text advertisement business is mainly conducted through sponsored search auction and content match technologies. Content matching is a widely used mechanism for selling online advertising by matching advertisements to content published on the Internet. Each time a user requests published content, advertising space may be allocated within the content served in response to the user's request. For instance, page content may be aggregated into keywords, and advertisements may be match to content using the highest payment offered by an advertiser for the keywords representing the content.
For the banner advertising segment, behavioral targeting technology has been used, where both users and advertisements are mapped into categories, and then advertisements with the highest payments offered by an advertisers that are in the same categories with a user will be served to that user. Unfortunately, the categories may be defined by marketing personnel relying on their experience, rather than by the interests of the users. Moreover, the categories may be defined in a hierarchy that may focus on vertical areas such as travel or shopping, and thus may unnecessarily restrict selection of an advertisement within a vertical, instead of considering the broader interests of the users and a representative sample of display properties for advertisers.
What is needed is a way to allocate and price advertisements that provide a representative sample of display properties for advertisers and take into account of the value of the unused inventory. Such a system and method should consider users' experience and interests to provide more relevant advertisements and should provide a representative sample of display properties for advertisers.